It is 10 years since Arsène Wenger spirited the 15-year-old Jérémie Aliadière out of France, prompting outrage and an investigation at the French national football centre at the Château Montjoye in Clairefontaine, where a trio of coaches were suspected of having tipped off the Arsenal manager.

One of those coaches, André Mérelle, summed up the qualities that had won the young centre-forward a place in the national Under-15 team. "Tall, slim, speedy, scores goals," Mérelle told me. "Sort of ... Van Basten."

For his £1.2m, Wenger acquired a player destined to score a record number of goals in the FA Youth Cup. Van Basten, however, Aliadière was not. He scored only once in 29 league appearances for Arsenal, 22 of them as a substitute, and various loan spells were followed in 2007 by a permanent move to Middlesbrough, where he remains, still scoring infrequently.

Lest it be thought, in the wake of the Gaël Kakuta affair, that English clubs are the only predators stalking Europe, it should be pointed out that the two clubs competing with Wenger for Aliadière's signature were Internazionale and Barcelona. Perhaps the boy would have met a similar fate at San Siro or Camp Nou. But it would be certainly interesting to know how his career might have developed had he stayed at Racing Club de Paris, where he played junior football, or accepted an offer to stay in France with FC Nantes.

Like Kakuta, Aliadière was a willing prey. But Noël le Graët, then president of the French league, could not contain his dismay. "His coaches, his teachers and his parents should ask themselves a few questions about the auction of a child of 15," he proclaimed. Not much has changed in the decade between l'affaire Aliadière and that of Kakuta, who was also 15 when approached by Chelsea. And if these two cases say a lot about the ability of the top Premier League clubs to impose their desires, it says even more about the incompetence of most of their academies.

With rare exceptions, English clubs in and around the top tier are making a costly mess of their duty to identify and develop indigenous talent. How much easier is it to send your scouts to a France Under-16 fixture, where a Kakuta or a Paul Pogba can be watched, their gifts already spotted and nurtured by coaches at clubs such as Lens and Le Havre? The hard part has already been done. All you have to do is sign a cheque and add another body to an already bloated squad.

The academy at Liverpool, who had 62 players on their books last season, has been a joke for years. The stream of talent that once flowed from Manchester United's recruitment policy has slowed to a trickle. And lurking behind the headlines, the most powerful indictment of Chelsea's recruitment policy is not the tapping-up of Kakuta but the length of the list of young players sent out on loan at the beginning of this season.

Eleven of them, aged between 18 and 21, are currently to be found wearing the shirts of other clubs. All but two are English and products of the club's academy. Most are presumably hoping to be recalled at the end of their loan period and given the chance to make their way into the first team. Precedent suggests that their ambitions are unlikely to be fulfilled.

This week Carlton Cole spoke of the effect of being sent out on loan from Stamford Bridge as a teenager after his ambitions were blunted by the arrival of a string of big-name strikers. "I didn't see the bigger picture," said Cole, who is now 25. "I didn't really take it seriously after that. I'd go on loan saying, 'It doesn't matter because I'll go back to Chelsea.'" Cole, who is in the England squad for tomorrow's match against Slovenia, came very close to joining the ranks of those who drift down through the leagues, losing their careers to a system distorted by money and the demand for instant success.

Clubs such as Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United will claim that they give their young players the best possible training and preparation for life as a professional footballer, wherever it may take them.

For many, however, the atmosphere of privilege is a snare and a delusion. They begin their careers in ideal surroundings, parking their first cars alongside the Audi Q7s and Bentley Continentals of the stars and enjoying the best medical attention. But when they are moved on, they discover that life outside the top half-dozen is much less comfortably cushioned. Not all have acquired the resilience needed to adapt to their new circumstances.

Chelsea are not alone in reacting to the economic crisis by reducing the number of players reporting daily to their five-star training facility. The lists of this summer's discards from Premier League clubs shows that the winnowing process has been even more vigorously enforced at Tottenham, where 10 home-produced players have gone out on loan and another 10 academy players have been released to find new clubs for themselves.

Rather than taking pride in the financial muscle that allows them to pluck schoolboys from France, Spain and Italy, English clubs should be ashamed of their own inefficiency.

Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini are right to attempt to ban transfers of players under the age of 18, not just to remove children from a distasteful process but to maintain the strength of the smaller clubs. Everyone will benefit. The minor club, receiving a higher transfer fee for a more mature 18-year-old. The big club, whose investment will be less of a risk. And the player himself, able to spend three years in a familiar and less pressurised environment before taking flight.

For all the scorn they attract in England, the presidents of Fifa and Uefa are attempting to do something for the long-term health of the players, the clubs, and the game as a whole. This week they made a robust and encouraging start.